Press Release

Hollis Taggart Galleries is pleased to announce the April 2011 release of Manierre Dawson (1887-1969): A Catalogue Raisonné, published by the Three Graces in association with our gallery. To complement the completion of this 15-year venture, we are proud to present an exhibition of this pioneering artist’s work.

Heralded as one of the most inventive American artists of his generation, Dawson created his first series of non-representational abstract paintings in the spring of 1910, making him among the first American artists to paint abstractly. Inclusion in the influential 1913 Armory Show in Chicago furthered his life-long commitment to abstract art. Dawson’s innovative approach to art has been acknowledged by major public collections; his work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among more than 30 other institutions.

Authored by Randy J. Ploog, of the Pennsylvania State University; catalogue raisonné director Myra Bairstow; and Ani Boyajian, editor of Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné (Yale, 2007), this richly illustrated publication is the first comprehensive examination of Dawson’s life and work. The publication provides detailed provenance, exhibition histories, and bibliographic references for his known 512 drawings, paintings, and sculpture. The catalogued works are illustrated—including 71 in color—and many of them are reproduced for the first time.

To accompany the release of this catalogue raisonné, our exhibition includes more than twenty of Dawson’s paintings and sculptures, dating from 1905 to the 1950s. Paintings including Twelve (1913) and Sunstrike (1913) demonstrate the subtle palette and engineering-inspired forms that were central to his work. The dramatic Seven (1914) and Figure Party-Colored (1913) represent the artist’s sophisticated breaking-down of the traditional picture plane on a large scale, an interest repeated in the smaller, vibrant Monument by the Sea (1917). These geometries are revisited in sculptures including Daphnis and Chloe (1957), complex explorations of his signature forms in three dimensions.